User:Pinchy

Overview
Sandbox is my favourite style. It provides the most amount of player choice and different routes that alter most of the variables that affect a players experience such as difficulty progression and time played

I start with a few days to a week just meditating and building ideas, this varies depending on the quality of submission required and complexity of the idea

I've made lots of maps based on a piece of music that fills my head with ideas, the entirety of The Alfonzone was created using that method the complete series of Alfonzo's speedmidis

Jimmy's 30 in 30 tracks are a go to choice for me, as well as Jmickle's midi packs

Personality

 * Favourability to sandbox style maps comes from me preferring games that have lasting content from a young age, when money was scarce and therefore game choice. Borrowing the Playstation versions of Doom 2 and Final Doom during my early teenage years gave me the experience of this style
 * My trait of pairing ambient music to the environment and experience a player has in the map stems from an experience when I was just a boy. A friend of my brothers lent me his Super Nintendo box set with Super Metroid and I had an entire quiet weekend to absorb it's content undisturbed. Having only ever had an NES before, it was my first experience on that console, it left a huge impact and seeded my personality strongly. The username "Pinchy Skree" was the name my very young self gave to the Baby Metroid on the title screen, it's about the story and inspiration the game had on my life, not the character itself

Philosophy

 * To progress through and explore the level creation process of all the classic shooters
 * I will always own and provide my previous work, it is a record that shows the journey of how far I've come

Technical Process

 * Choose the texture groups for the main sections and the connections (at least two walls and two floors)
 * Choose the textures for the utility groups: Switches, lights, trims and teleporters
 * Replace the STARTAN2 default texture with one that makes height easy to read at a glance
 * Measure out the spaces for the main open areas and connections
 * Construct the map boundary and skybox build around that
 * Decide the unique detailing tropes for each main area
 * Create motifs I can reuse with variations throughout each section (such a pillar for a torch to stand on, room trim and ceiling detail styles)

Tenets I Abide By

 * Use the least amount of doors and movement blockers possible
 * Well lit and faced switches and activators
 * Add a good mix of liquids and middefs
 * Evenly mix roaming, teleporting and moving floor monster reveals
 * Minimal symmetry
 * Include outdoor and indoor areas
 * Clean alignment and automap
 * Good colour groups in each room/section/biome
 * Only use high health monsters as tough pressure or fixed turrets that are low priority targets (so as not to stall a fast paced encounter or drain a players ammo)

Notable History

 * Christopher Dewey (KingDime) streaming the creation of his map "Dimewrecksquared" for #DooM Speedmapping Session 1 was the push that gave me the confidence to download Doom Builder and try creating a map for the first time
 * The first map I created was pinchy.wad, used as the testing grounds to learn the editor, completed on 27th of September 2014
 * I started working on Based.wad the next day. This was a project designed for me to learn how to create a multi episode level set, use more advanced features and add custom content
 * The first draft of Trinary Temple for Ancient Aliens was completed six months before the significant overhaul and final version was submitted. I had much less experience than the other authors, so used that time to improve as much as possible, with a significant output to community projects in that time
 * The Alfonzone was a project I created due to a huge burst of inspiration after listening to Alfonzo's speedmidis and my desire to explore advanced source port features. I originally had a more ambitious advanced source port project with a very detailed design document that I had to put aside as I didn't have the skills to create it

Links

 * My Doom content
 * My Quake content
 * Twitch stream Live mapping streams here